Doug Berman at the Sentencing Law and Policy blog has two posts about cases in which defendants in child pornography cases received lesser sentences because they were paralyzed, here and here. Dan Filler has some related comments here at The Faculty Lounge. There seems to be an underlying assumption that paralysis means the offenders pose no ongoing danger to children. But does it? It may mean that the offenders are less likely to engage in physically coercive sex with children. But it wouldn’t stop them from continuing to provide a market for child pornography, which incentivizes its creation and distribution. And it wouldn’t stop them from trying to manipulate children into sexual activity. And it wouldn’t prevent the man who admitted to who admitted to secretly videotaping young girls who used his bathroom from doing so again. The articles Berman links to suggest that the real reason the prosecutors do not want to imprison these men is that providing necessary medical care would be expensive.
–Ann Bartow
Good points.